The International Hotel, Tourism and Culinary Management Institutes (IMI) is primarily a residential hotel and tourism school situated in Central Switzerland. Established in 1990, its three founding members all had considerable experience of the hotel industry and of running hotel schools in Ireland, Greece, Indonesia, Kenya, Malta and Switzerland.
Courses in Switzerland have traditionally been biased towards technical proficiency with little emphasis on management. The founders of IMI Mr Heinz Bürki, Mr Rudolf Fischer and Mr Tom Maher wished to bias the courses more towards a study of hospitality management. IMI originally offered three courses, a Certificate in Food and Beverage Management, a Diploma in Hotel Operational Management and Higher Diploma in Hotel and Tourism Management.
In 1993, the Postgraduate Diploma in Hotel and Tourism Management was developed allowing graduates of non-hospitality disciplines to follow a conversion course and obtain industrial experience. This was followed in 1997 by the development in conjunction with The Manchester Metropolitan University, UK of a BA degree course in International Hotel and Tourism Management and in 2001 with an MSc in International Tourism Management. In 2002, the Postgraduate Diploma was extended to include further study for an MBA, the first degree qualification to be offered and validated by IMI.
In 1995 the International Tourism Institute (later the International Tourism Institute, Switzerland) was founded and entered into a relationship whereby a BA Honours degree in International Tourism Management was offered, validated by the University of North London, UK. This relationship was terminated in 2002 and IMI/ITIS now works with Manchester Metropolitan University alone. A postgraduate diploma course similar to the IMI programme was also offered.
The School was founded in Hotel Waldstaetten, Weggis and as numbers grew, the School leased the Hotel National in Weggis and Hotel Acheregg in Stanstaad. Each site catered for one of the three years of the course. Due to the expansion of student numbers and the increase in the number of courses being offered by IMI, it was decided to consolidate the number of sites and IMI moved to a large campus at Kastanienbaum in August 1997. First year and postgraduate hotel management students remained based in Weggis until 2002 when Weggis was sold and operations concentrated at Kastanienbaum.
IMI's Board of Directors initially consisted of the founding members. Mr Tom Maher passed away in 1995 and Mr Carmel Fsadni represented his widow until 2000 when she disposed of her shares and he became a member of the Board of Directors.
Our Vision is to be the leading Swiss University Centre with a worldwide reputation for the employability of our graduates in the hospitality and service industries based on academic, professional and personal excellence. Our Mission is to provide hospitality and service management higher education to students from all over the world, and nurture them to become accomplished and successful hospitality and business executives for the global economy.
Our Values: Our vision and mission are supported by four core value pillars upon which we base our activities to develop well-balanced students:
1. Academic Quality 2. Professional and Career Development and Lifelong Learning 3. Personal Responsibility 4. Leading by Example
